March 14, 2018

Well, it wasn't the most fun reading I've ever done, not by a long shot, but today I finished "How Democracies Die" by two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

A basic message of the book is summarized in the final chapter:

When American democracy has worked, it has relied upon two norms that we often take for granted -- mutual tolerance and institutional forebearance. Treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and underutilizing one's institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play are not written into the American Constitution. Yet without them, our constitutional checks and balances will not operate as we expect them to.

Trump, of course, is pushing hard against what Levitsky and Ziblatt call the "guardrails" of democracy.

He's notoriously prone to denigrating his political opponents, going so far as to threaten Hillary Clinton with jail time, which Trump's supporters applauded with cries of Lock her up!

And Trump not only ignores the forebearance of former presidents who acted in accord with historical precedent, he takes childish pride in behaving as unpresidential as possible, wrongly viewing this as some sort of authenticity rather than as what it is -- boorish behavior.

After reading the scarily cogent descriptions of how Trump is acting like other authoritarian national leaders, I was fully prepared for the Saving Democracy chapter to be full of hard-hitting advice about how to resist the dangers of Trumpism.

I wasn't disappointed. However, I was surprised.

Probably I shouldn't have been, since what Levitsky and Ziblatt call for in that chapter is fully commensurate with the tone of their entire book. I guess it was my own desire to give Trump and his GOP enablers a taste of their own medicine that caused me to anticipate a harder-edged tone regarding how our democracy is to be saved.

In short, to do what Trump should be doing, but isn't: engage in mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. Here's some passages from the Saving Democracy chapter on this subject.

In our view, the idea that Democrats should "fight like Republicans" is misguided. First of all, evidence from other countries suggests that such a strategy often plays directly into the hands of authoritarians. Scorched-earth tactics often erode support for the opposition by scaring off moderates.

And they unify pro-government forces, as even dissidents within the incumbent party close ranks in the face of an uncompromising opposition. And when the opposition fights dirty, it provides the government with justification for cracking down.

...Even if Democrats were to succeed in weakening or removing President Trump via hardball tactics, their victory would be Pyrrhic -- for they would inherit a democracy stripped of its remaining protective guardrails.

If the Trump administration were brought to its knees by obstructionism, or if President Trump were impeached without a strong bipartisan consensus, the effect would be to reinforce -- and perhaps hasten -- the dynamics of partisan antipathy and norm erosion that helped bring Trump to power to begin with.

As much as a third of the country would likely view Trump's impeachment as the machinations of a vast left-wing conspiracy -- maybe even as a coup. American politics would be left dangerously unmoored.

And here's a passage that resonates particularly true given yesterday's marvelous win of Democrat Conor Lamb over his Republican opponent in a Pennsylvania special election for a House seat. Lamb took some positions at odds with liberal orthodoxy, but that's what was needed to win in a district that had voted Republican for many years.

Building coalitions that extend beyond our natural allies is difficult. It requires a willingness to set aside, for the moment, issues we care deeply about.

If progressives make positions on issues such as abortion rights or single-payer health care a "litmus test" for coalition membership, the chances for building a coalition that includes evangelicals and Republican business executives will be nil.

We must lengthen our time horizons, swallow hard, and make tough concessions. This does not mean abandoning the causes that matter to us. It means temporarily overlooking disagreements in order to find common moral ground.

March 12, 2018

I love my 2017 VW Golf GTI. It's a great car, the most enjoyable to drive I've ever owned. But about a year after I bought the GTI, the sunroof developed an annoying creaking sound, mixed in with some rattles. Here's a nighttime photo of the little devil.

After the noises appeared, I did some Googling and found that sunroof problems appear to be fairly common with Golf/GTI models. The first time I took my car into the VW of Salem (Oregon) service department, the staff checked it out but couldn't determine what was causing the problem.

So I went back a second time. Whoever worked on the car somehow thought that whatever they did had caused the sunroof noise to go away, because the service report I got said that my car sounded like other VW's with a sunroof.

Well, after driving it home and going over some speed bumps, which made the creaking noise appear, I attempted a few fixes on my own.

I sprayed the gaskets with silicone. I applied Gummi Pflege lube to the channel at the back of the sunroof assembly, since I'd discovered that tilting the sunroof up even a tiny bit made the noise go away, and I'd read about the Gummi Pflege tip on a "Golf sunroof noise" discussion page.

But nothing I did worked, so I contacted Dan Gonzales, the VW of Salem service manager, and told him another approach was needed. Dan kindly gave me a loaner car to drive while mine was being worked on. Little did we know that I'd have the loaner car for five weeks.

It was quite a saga, the sunroof repair. I'm sharing a copy of the service report, with some personal info blacked out, in hopes that someone with a similar problem will learn what worked (and didn't work) with my car.Download VW GTI sunroof service report

I got frustrated with how long the repair was taking. But after reading the service report, I now realize more fully how much time and effort it took to figure out what the problem was, even though Gonzales did a good job of keeping me informed through the twists and turns of the repair job.

Because the service report is kind of hard to read, I've typed out the sunroof repair portion of it below.

Test drove and found creaking noise from right rear of sunroof assembly when going over uneven road surfaces at slow speeds intermittently. Verified TB [technical bulletin, I assume] for applying antisqueak material along along rear edge of sunroof had already been performed.

Found noise was also present in same location when pushing on headliner near same right rear corner of sunroof. After further test drives, found noise also is not present if sunroof is opened, even a small amount.

As per Techline, completely loosened sliding glass panel and readjusted as per ELSA [repair manual]. Also applied light layer of silicone spray on edge of glass and found noise still present.

As per Techline, removed all pillar trims and other components necessary to remove headliner. Removed headliner assembly and test drove. Found noise still present.

After sunroof replacement, found noise was still present. As per QTM [Quality Technical Manager], took pictures and measurements of glass panel fit and sent in for review. As per QTM, removed glass panel and removed front panel trim above sunshade assembly.

Reinstalled glass panel and test drove and found noise no longer present. As per QTM, replaced glass panel assembly and sunroof front panel trim (one time use, gets destroyed when removed & must be replaced). Submitted photos and measurements for review.

Bottom line: this tale has a happy ending. I haven't heard any creaking or rattling from the repaired sunroof. VW of Salem stuck with the repair and I'm pleased with the result. Sure, it bothered me that it took five weeks, but this was a complex job.

My car was returned looking great, as Dan Gonzales had it detailed before I picked it up. And he told me that I can pick out $200 worth of accessories from the parts department. That's good customer service.

March 09, 2018

Today David Harrelson started off his Salem City Club talk about the Kalapuya tribe by asking how many people in the audience considered themselves native Oregonians.

A bunch of hands went up from those, I assume, who were born in this state. Harrelson then pointed out the difference between the First People, genuine native Americans, and native Oregonians.

The former, he said, could count at least 500 generations in their family history. So when people talk about being a 5th generation Oregonian, that doesn't impress him.

Harrelson is the Cultural Resources Department Manager for The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. He's a Grand Ronde tribal member. His talk, "The Life and Times of the Kalapuya: First Peoples of the Willamette Valley," was highly informative and entertaining.

I liked Harrelson's style.

He was firm about the entirely justified claim that the Native American people who were living in the Willamette Valley before the settlers arrived are the true Oregonians, and were treated horribly unjustly.

But Harrelson wasn't into guilt-tripping. He didn't need to, because the facts he presented made us non-native City Club attendees feel bad about what happened to the Kalapuya and other western Oregon tribes without any extra dose of chastising.

As hard as it is to believe, he told us that in 1750 an estimated 30,000 Native Americans were living in the Willamette Valley. But by 1850 about 98% of them had been lost, largely to diseases, I'm guessing. So by the time settlers arrived in large numbers, there weren't many tribe members left to resettle.

Early on in his talk Harrelson showed a slide with a "natural" image of the Willamette Valley next to an image showing how it looks now, with crops being raised in tidy square parcels of farmland.

He then said that actually the Kalapuya managed the land for abundance in their own fashion. For example, they set cold burn fires that weren't hot enough to sterilize the soil, but killed fungus, bugs, dead parts of plants, and such. Fresh grasses then would shoot up that attracted deer and elk, who prefer "baby grass."

It also was interesting to hear that lighting a fire under an oak tree at the proper time would burn up the buggy acorns that fall first from the tree. Then the acorns that fell afterward could be harvested without having to sort out the good acorns from those that had bugs in them.

Camas bulbs were another example of how Native Americans managed for abundance.

Harrelson said that the big bulbs would be dug up and kept, while the smaller ones would be left to spread out, producing a denser patch of Camas in future years. Deer and elk would eat the flowers, helping to spread Camas since the seeds were more likely to germinate after being passed through an animal's digestive tract.

He objected to the common notion that Native Americans had some sort of mystical relationship with nature. No, he told us, it was science, figuring out the best ways to manage nature for long-term human requirements. There's no need to romanticize Indians, Harrelson said.

I'm fascinated by the Missoula Floods that inundated the Willamette Valley between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. Harrelson said that the lake formed by the floods was up to 400 feet deep. Until the history of the floods was determined fairly recently, tribal legends about gigantic flooding were considered to be fiction.

But stories of how Native Americans found shelter on Mary's Peak near Corvallis and other high ground now are considered to have grounding in reality.

The image on the right side of this slide shows where different tribes were located in the Willamette Valley. There were five different language families, with the differences between them being as great as the difference between French and Chinese, Harrelson told us.

This slide explained the origins of the word, Chemawa, which is a "place of low-lying, frequently overflowed ground."

Harrelson gave us some of the history of treaties that forced the removal of Native Americans to steadily shrinking territory in western Oregon. A forced march to Grande Ronde from Medford was one of the atrocities inflicted on tribe members. He gave us a link to a web site, www.ndnhistoryresearch.com, which has documents and other information relating to the history of Oregon tribes.

Here's a link to descriptions of treaties with the Kalapuya and other tribes in the 1850's. Disturbing reading, for sure.

Lastly, Harrelson gave us a new word, "Landcestor." This is contrasted with "Ancestor." Most of us aren't ancestors of the Native Americans who inhabited Oregon before the settlers arrived. But Harrelson said we are part of the story of the land that is Oregon at this point in time.

Hopefully we'll live up to our responsibility to take care of the land that now is almost entirely under the control of non-Native Americans.

March 06, 2018

My teeth-cleaning appointment started with a statement and ended in sadness. "Dr. Panet-Raymond isn't here today," I was told. "Friday his daughter died in a skiing accident on Mt. Bachelor."

That hit me hard. I've known Marc Panet-Raymond for a long time. We've talked a lot about philosophy and many other subjects during the time my mouth wasn't wide open for dental work.

A story in the Oregonian, "Woman who died on Mt. Bachelor 'lifted everyone who was around her,' father says," tells what happened. But no story can capture the feelings of Panet-Raymond, his wife, and son on the day they got a call that Nicole Panet-Raymond was missing on the ski slopes.

When Nicole Panet-Raymond's family found out she was missing on Mt. Bachelor in Bend, they loaded their car with ski gear, helmet lights and shovels to join the search and rescue effort.

Searchers found the 19-year-old's body before her family arrived from Portland.

The University of Oregon sophomore from Portland was one of two people who died Friday on Mt. Bachelor after they separately fell into holes at the base of trees.

Nicole Panet-Raymond was an avid skier and adventurer who hoped one day to practice international law, her father said. She had a knack for striking up a conversation with anyone.

"There's just waves of pain and anguish that are unending. It comes and subsides and then it comes and crashes upon you again," Marc Panet-Raymond said Monday. "There's no pain like losing a child. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

I was going to put there are no words in the title of this blog post. But since I was about to use a bunch of words, that seemed stupid. Still... there are no words.

No parent believes their child is going to die before they do. Life just isn't supposed to work that way. I can't imagine how I'd feel if my daughter died before me. Even less can I imagine how the Panet-Raymond family felt when they got to Mt. Bachelor and learned from a medical examiner that their daughter had died in a snowy tree well.

All day I've been thinking, "No matter what problems I have, they're nothing compared to losing a child." I look at Nicole Panet-Raymond's photo and imagine how she felt about her 19 year old life, how much she had to look forward to. The Oregonian story says:

She was studying at the University of Oregon's Robert D. Clark Honors College as an international studies and Spanish double major, according to Marc Panet-Raymond. He said she planned to study in Spain in the fall and had already been to Norway, Finland and other European countries, partly through friendships she'd maintained with foreign exchange students who had lived with their family.

I never met Nicole. But I know the quirky good humor of her father well. It must have been so very tough for him to speak with the Oregonian reporter so soon after the death of his daughter. I'm glad he did, even though there are no words...

After my teeth-cleaning, which was quieter than usual, because both of us were filled with sadness, I said, "Whether someone is religious or not, this just sucks. If there's a God, he's a malevolent S.O.B. to allow a 19 year old's life to be cut short like this. And if there's no God, which is my bet, this shows that life is filled with pain and suffering."

There's no meaning, no life lesson, that can come from the sudden death of Nicole Panet-Raymond. It's just pure sadness. Yes, today I've been filled with more of a sense of how precious every moment is, because none of us knows when our last moment will be.

But that sentiment is meaningless, really. Death can't be balanced with words or feelings. There's no compensation for a 19 year old life cut short by a fall into a tree well. There's just a wish that the Panet-Raymond family finds some solace within their sorrow.

February 28, 2018

It's only been three days since I started taking NAD+, which grabbed the attention of my wife and me when we read about it in a TIME magazine piece, "Is an Anti-Aging pill on the Horizon?"

Anti-aging products from skin creams to chemical peels are part of a $250 billion industry, but scientists have yet to discover a longevity elixir that stands up to medical scrutiny. A group of researchers believe they’re getting closer, however, thanks to a compound called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ for short.

“NAD+ is the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth,” says David Sinclair, co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. “It’s one of the most important molecules for life to exist, and without it, you’re dead in 30 seconds.”

NAD+ is a molecule found in all living cells and is critical for regulating cellular aging and maintaining proper function of the whole body. Levels of NAD+ in people and animals diminish significantly over time, and researchers have found that re-upping NAD+ in older mice causes them to look and act younger, as well as live longer than expected. In a March 2017 study published in the journal Science, Sinclair and his colleagues put drops of a compound known to raise levels of NAD+ into the water for a group of mice.

Within a couple hours, the NAD+ levels in the mice had risen significantly. In about a week, signs of aging in the tissue and muscles of the older mice reversed to the point that researchers could no longer tell the difference between the tissues of a 2-year-old mouse and those of a 4-month-old one.

Well, that was enough to convince us to order some NAD+ from Life Extension. So this is our new hope for staving off aging as well and as long as possible.

I'm a big believer in the placebo effect.

So I'm going to say that NAD+ is making me feel more youthful and energetic. Hey, even if it isn't doing anything -- and I'm taking 500 mg a day, so it should be doing something -- I'll let science perform its future doubleblind experiments and bask for now in my belief that NAD+ is doing its thing for me.

Hey, if I feel like my telomeres are longer, maybe they actually are. (Please compliment me on my pleasingly lengthy telomeres if you see me in person; that'll help with my placebo effect.) Dr. Oz is big on astragalus, for what that's worth.

Well, somewhere along the line I decided to stop taking astragalus. Which fits with a long-term trend of mine -- culling the herd of the supplements I take.

Our supplements cabinet is still chock fill, but I feel like the quality of what I've taking has improved now that I've gotten rid of some products with questionable benefits and focused more on products like Bone Restore and MacuGuard that have a better chance of benefitting specific parts of me (in these cases, my bones and eyes).

Also, most school shooters aren't really mentally ill. My wife is a retired psychotherapist. She understands mental illness. And she understands that most school shooters are angry, bitter, enraged, depressed -- but not clinically mentally ill.

There's loose talk from Trump of reopening mental hospitals and forcing disturbed teenagers to be admitted. This makes no sense. It isn't easy to commit someone to a mental institution, nor should it be.

"Disturbed" isn't at all the same as "mentally ill."

By definition, anyone who goes into a school and kills people is disturbed, because this behavior isn't normal. However, taking that sort of action requires planning and forethought. A would-be school shooter who is psychotic or otherwise out of contact with reality likely won't be able to carry out his plan.

Sure, disturbed youth who appear to pose a threat to themselves or others need to get help. But a policy of committing them to a mental institution or taking their guns away probably is going to backfire.

Potential school shooters aren't insane. They know what they want to do and how to do it.

It stands to reason that they will be well aware of a policy in their community that anyone who makes threats about killing others will face serious consequences: forced mental health treatment, having guns confiscated.

Trump and the NRA seem to believe that would-be school shooters won't change their behavior in the face of those sorts of policies. This is the same sort of simplistic thinking that led to everyone being forced to take off their shoes before boarding a plane because once a terrorist tried to detonate a shoe bomb.

Um, terrorists can read. They can think. They know that measures are being taken to detect shoe bombs, so almost certainly they now will try other ways of bringing down an airplane.

Same applies to people pondering a school shooting. If they know that acting angry and making threats will bring them to the attention of authorities, many, if not most, will alter their behavior. They won't want to have their guns confiscated, so they will act as normal as possible.

Focusing on mental illness after a school shooting is just a ruse by the NRA and their supporters to deflect attention from the real cause of school gun deaths. Which is, of course, guns.

Automobile accidents are called that because, duh, it takes an automobile to have an automobile accident. Likewise, it takes a gun to have a gun death. How many people have been killed in school by a knife or explosive? To my knowledge, zero.

Easy access to guns is the reason our country has so many school shootings. Universal background checks, banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines -- these are what will save lives, not a misguided focus on mental illness.

February 18, 2018

It infuriates me that there's any debate about what needs to be done: ban the AR-15 and other assault rifles along with high capacity magazines, and strengthen background checks for all gun purchasers.

That’s the message seething students have for President Trump and other gun-friendly lawmakers, demanding they stop making excuses and immediately pass reforms in the aftermath of the Florida bloodshed — or face being voted out of office.

What's deeply irritating is that many conservatives who oppose gun control legislation that would save many lives claim to be in favor of a "culture of life" because they oppose abortion.

This is total B.S.

Anyone who doesn't do everything in their power to stop the snuffing out of young lives has zero credibility on the culture of life front.

And we know what needs to be done, because other countries that have done that thing have a much lower rate of school shootings.

The other half of the incidents were in 35 countries that have 3.8 billion people, and thirteen of those countries have never had a school massacre. What makes the United States so special, in a very bad way?

Guns.

We have way more guns than those other countries. They have mentally disturbed people, just as we do. But guns are the problem, not people. Other countries have much stronger gun ownership laws, so they have many fewer gun deaths.

Violence in U.S. schools is much more likely be carried out using a gun, too. As Quartz explained about the study:

In the vast majority of U.S. killings, perpetrators used guns. By comparison, China — with the second-greatest number of incidents — saw 10 mass killings, but none involving firearms. Germany saw three mass shootings; Finland saw two. Thirteen other countries each saw one incident with at least one person being wounded or killed; in the rest nobody was reported as hurt.

There's evidence, too, that school violence is declining in other places. As my colleague explained this morning, “in Europe, there hasn't been a major high-casualty gun attack on a campus in almost a decade.”

That's because Americans have a disproportionate number of guns (at least 300 million, about one per person), especially handguns and semiautomatic weapons. (A bullet from an AR-15 rifle, which the alleged shooter used in the Florida attack Wednesday, can penetrate a steel helmet from five hundred yards.)

The average life expectancy at birth for both sexes is 79 years. Premature deaths at any age are bad. When teenagers die in a school shooting, it is horrific. Those fourteen students who were shot to death by an AR-15 rifle started Valentine's Day feeling that a long life lay before them.

By the end of the school day they had no life left. They were dead, victims of a rabid gun culture in this country that doesn't give a crap about how many people die from guns, so long as gun nuts can have unfettered access to their beloved weapons of mass destruction.

I'm fed up with useless thoughts and prayers after every mass shooting. I'm proud of the students who are vowing to vote out any politician who doesn't support strong gun control legislation.

February 16, 2018

Well, it's been a couple of years since I last wrote about how to imbibe marijuana. Time for an update from this 69 year old baby boomer who is still learning new cannabis tricks in our happy new world of legal pot here in Oregon and elsewhere.

As I said in "Tips for 'vaping' marijuana if you want to go first class," there's a lot to like about buying cannabis flower/buds, grinding it up, and vaporizing the weed rather than rolling a joint -- which was usually the only way we Flower Children smoked it way back in the late 1960's.

Vaporizing, or vaping, has no smell associated with it. And a little goes a long way, since none of the marijuana goes up in wasteful smoke. Inhaling on a vaporizer, like my much-beloved Pax 3, causes the heated cannabis to release its THC, CBD and other good stuff into the lungs. There's very little throat irritation, if this is a concern.

But periodically loose-leaf vaporizers need to be cleaned. I use a couple of pipe cleaners, several Q-tips, and alcohol. I clean my Pax 3 about once a week after using it daily in the evening as a mood relaxer, along with a glass of red wine. And grinding the flower so it vaporizes better is another periodic chore, albeit not an onerous one.

So I've been gradually edging into using cannabis/hash oil cartridges. These contain concentrates of THC, CBD, or a combination of THC and CBD. They're typically screwed onto a battery, or pen, that heats the oil when inhaling happens, though some batteries are disposable, with the oil integrated into the battery.

I enjoy the Select CBD-only disposable pens, which can be ordered from anywhere in the United States. CBD has numerous health benefits without the psychoactive effects of THC.

Yesterday I bought a couple of high THC Select cartridges, one a Sativa strain and one an Indica strain. Basically, Sativa is more uplifting and energetic, while Indica is more relaxing and couch potato'ish. The cartridge boxes have wine-like descriptions on the back.

The budtender who helped me at the cannabis store pointed me toward a new battery/pen that looked so cool, I had to get one. It's called the Palm, by CCell/Weeplus. You screw a connector onto a cartridge, then drop the cartridge into a magnetic slot on the battery, which is considerably more powerful than the pen I'd been using.

An enthusiastic (and high) woman describes the virtues of the Palm in this video.

I can testify that what she says is accurate, especially her "this will fuck you up," if I remember those words correctly.

Wanting to try out both the new Sativa and Indica cartridges I'd bought, plus the CCell Palm battery, I soon realized that (1) the cartridges were potent and (2) the Palm is quite a bit more powerful than the battery I'd been using with cartridges. So four puffs on each cartridge, which usually leaves me feeling good but not wiped out, hit me much harder than I expected.

Well, live and learn.

For a few hours I was flying higher than I'm used to, which made me feel a bit uneasy. I'm pretty sure that it was the more potent Palm battery that made most of the difference, since there seemed to be considerably more vapor produced from it -- a positive fact, and one that I'll keep in mind next time I use the Palm.

So if you get one, my advice is to start with fewer inhales than you're accustomed to. This is especially good advice for anyone starting to imbibe cannabis, either from a fresh start or after a long dry spell.

Opinions differ about how much stronger marijuana is these days, compared to back in the 60's. There was "good stuff" back then comparable to what's available now. However, the concentrates in cartridges or in some other form definitely have a more intense kick than smoking a joint, or vaporizing.

The Select products reflect this. They have a Social brand of cartridges for people who want THC, but not a giant high.

Social is a low potency cannabis vape brand designed for any occasion. A mild high for people visiting areas with recreational marijuana, and anybody else who just needs a mellow dose of THC.

Parents with a little time alone can puff discreetly and quickly return to normal function. Baby boomers, scared away by the arms race of ever-increasing THC levels, can return to recreational cannabis enjoyment. Share Social with friends at a reunion, a special night out with friends, or other Social event.

By contrast, this is the description of the high THC Elite brand that I flew high on.

Select ELITE elevates your cannabis enjoyment to a higher level with luxuriant terpene-infused oil. This top shelf cartridge packs a powerful punch with our highest concentration of activated THC. Single source terpenes are reintroduced into our Elite oil after the distillation process for strain specific flavors and effects.

February 10, 2018

Kate Bowler has written a book about her struggles with several serious health problems, with the worst being a stage 4 colorectal cancer diagnosis. It is funny, sad, moving, inspiring, and so much more. From the first page to the last, I was deeply engrossed in her story.

Even though I don't believe in God, and Kate Bowler does, I felt wonderfully close to her as I finished her marvelous book in a few transfixed sittings. She and I have much more in common -- our shared humanity -- than what divides us, our theological worldview. Like Bowler, I have a chronic health problem, though one that isn't nearly as serious as hers.

I'm so thankful that Bowler had the talent and courage to write a book with so much heart. She is so honest, so truthful, I found every sentence she wrote to be captivating.

What I admired the most was her willingness to look at her Christian beliefs with such openness and sensitivity.

Bowler accepts what makes sense to her, such as God exists and loves us. She rejects the nonsensical aspects of Christianity, notably the Prosperity Gospel ridiculousness. As someone who read and scoffed at The Secret, which similarly posits that we can create our own reality, I loved her putdowns of those who tried to find meaning in the tragedy of her cancer diagnosis.

I struggle every day with my much milder chronic condition. Thank you, Kate Bowler, for writing a book that has made it easier for me to carry on in the present moment, which really is all any of us really has -- despite our predilection to stare at the past and future rather than what is right before us.

One of my favorite passages is this:

Beverly lived in the apocalyptic future, and the scholar lived in the past. I think I believed that I was living in the center, but I rarely let my feet rest on solid ground, rooting me in the present. My eyes shifted to look for that thing just beyond, the next deadline, the next hurdle, the next plan.... I would not say it was simply that I didn't stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of being impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead. I must learn to live in ordinary time, but I don't know how.

It's really difficult for me to summarize Bowler's book.

She writes so well, with such heart, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to her if I substitute my words for hers. So my main piece of advice is Buy This Book. She has a web site, a blog, and a Twitter feed if you want to sample her writing that way.

Here's some other passages from her book that I loved:

My in-box is full of strangers giving reasons. People offer them to me like wildflowers they picked along the way. A few people want me to cultivate spiritual acceptance. "We have had millions of births and deaths in different life-forms," explains a Hindu woman gently. "Don't worry, this life shall pass and your soul will move forward to its next step."

This world is a place of suffering, they write, a garden full of weeds that we tend as best we can.

But most everyone I meet is dying to make me certain. They want me to know, without a doubt, that there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos. Even when I was still in the hospital, a neighbor came to the door and told my husband that everything happens for a reason.

"I'd love to hear it," he replied.

"Pardon?" she said, startled.

"The reason my wife is dying," he said in that sweet and sour way he has, effectively ending the conversation as the neighbor stammered something and handed him a casserole.

Christians want me to reassure them that my cancer is all part of a plan. A few letters even suggest that God's plan was that I get cancer so I could help people by writing the New York Times article. There is a circular logic to these attempts to explain the course of my life.

If you inspire people while dying, the plan for your life was that you would become an example to others. If you don't and you die kicking and screaming, the plan was that you discover some important divine lessons. Either way, learn to accept God's plan.

...These are the three life lessons people try to teach me that, frankly, sometimes feel worse than cancer itself.

The first is that I shouldn't be so upset, because the significance of death is relative. I like to call the people with that message the Minimizers... A lot of Christians like to remind me that heaven is my true home, which makes me want to ask them if they would like to go home first. And atheists can be equally trite by demanding that I immediately give up any search for meaning.

...The second lesson comes from the Teachers, who focus on how this experience is supposed to be an education in mind, body, and spirit. "I suppose that this is the ultimate test of faith for you," one man muses, hoping that I will have the good sense to accept God's will... Sometimes I want every know-it-all to send me a note when they face the grisly specter of death, and I'll send them a cat poster that says HANG IN THERE!

...The hardest lessons come from the Solutions People, who are already a little disappointed that I am not saving myself. "Keep smiling! Your attitude determines your destiny!" says Jane from Idaho, and I am immediately worn out by the tyranny of prescriptive joy.

...There is a trite cruelty in the logic of the perfectly certain. Those letter writers are not simply trying to give me something. They are also, always, tallying up the sum of my life, sometimes for clues, sometimes for answers, always to pronounce a verdict. But I am not on trial.

...This is the problem, I suppose, with formulas. They are generic. But there is nothing generic about a human life... There is no life in general. Each day has been a collection of trivial details -- little intimacies and jokes and screw-ups and realizations. My problems can't be solved by those formulas -- those cliches -- when my life was never generic to begin with.

God may be universal but I am not. I am Toban's wife and Zach's mom and Karen and Gerry's daughter. I am here now, bolted in time and place, to the busy sounds of a blonde boy in dinosaur pajamas crashing into every piece of furniture.

February 06, 2018

Global warming is real. We humans are causing it. Urgent steps need to be taken to reduce carbon emissions.

These three facts are borne out by some photos I took a few days ago of how vegetation is leafing out much earlier than usual on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon.

We've lived here for 28 years. This is really unusual plant behavior for February 4. The green shoots screamed to me, Global warming is making us do this!

Now, I'm old enough (69) and have lived in Oregon long enough (47 years) to run the risk of sounding like the proverbial geezer talking about the Blizzard of Ought-Eight, when the snow reached as high as grandma's chin.

But I sure do remember when December, January, and February here in the Willamette Valley typically were filled with weeks of solid rain, ice storms, freezing temperatures, and other weather nastiness.

Such is much less common now. Temperatures are warmer. More precipitation is falling as rain in the mountains rather than snow. We've only had a few days of freezing temperatures. Our daffodils are getting ready to bloom.

Yes, I understand the difference between weather and climate. But I've got almost a half century of experience with western Oregon weather, and there's been changes over those years that certainly are due to global warming.

Which, of course, is caused by carbon pollution.

Environmentalists, business people, and many others concerned about reducing Oregon's carbon footprint have been working on a cap-and-trade bill that is desperately needed.

In addition to creating a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, the plan would require many of Oregon's largest polluters to pay for their emissions by purchasing allowances at an auction. The state would spend the proceeds from the auctions to reduce the financial impact to households, support projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help areas disproportionately impacted by climate change.

What's aggravating, though, is that the same story says that Democrats in the state Senate claim there isn't time in the shorter 2018 legislative session to pass the cap-and-trade bill -- even though Dems control both houses of the legislature and the governor is a Democrat.

So how long is it going to take? And another question: how much time does the world have to reduce carbon emissions? My answers: too long, and no time to waste.

Disturbingly, Governor Kate Brown didn't mention cap-and-trade in her recent State of the State address. Yet pleasingly, Nike has joined the Oregon Business Alliance for Climate, a group supporting the cap-and-trade bill.

Every day I get an email from Brown's re-election campaign asking for a donation.

Earth to Brown, via me: When you start pushing legislators to pass the cap-and-trade bill this year. and promise to sign the bill if it reaches your desk, that's when I'll start to consider contributing additional money to your campaign.